A stolen truck left a trail of destruction Wednesday night - rattling residents in an east-end London neighbourhood.
Candice Lubick was in her Mazda 3 heading east on Brydges Street around 8:00 p.m. when she noticed a black pick-up truck being pursued by a number of police vehicles.
She said she pulled to the right and held on, “They were driving so fast that our car was saying in their draft after every car. I had my hands up and I said, ‘They’re going to hit us.’”
The vehicles made it past, but just a few seconds later the pick-up spun around, heading back east. The truck slammed into the back of her vehicle.
She had recently undergone abdominal surgery, “The tension jarred everything. I have a ton of bruising now from the seat belt.”
She still had stitches from the surgery and was taken to hospital for observation.
London Police say their first encounter with the pickup was in the area of Dundas Street and Carlyle. They say at that point the truck actually swerved at the police cruiser.
The truck went south on Carlyle and then sped west on Admiral Drive.
Police say two police vehicles were intentionally rammed and three citizen vehicles were hit.
“It sounded, honestly, like a GTA-5 kind of situation, like something out of a video game,” Chris Lapping told CTV News he was in his apartment when he heard a clatter come down the road, “I heard the car, or the truck, I guess, just scrape up because it was on its rims there. So I looked out my window, seeing three people hop out of the truck. Ran down here into my driveway - down here where all our cars are parked.”
Lapping says the men tried to steal another vehicle but picked the wrong target, “(They) ran back right to my neighbor’s truck and within, like, ten seconds had the window smashed and were trying to start it over. But they picked the only vehicle in the parking lot that didn’t work.”
Soon the three suspects were back in the pick-up. They ditched the truck near Trafalgar and Marconi Boulevard a short time later.
They then carjacked another vehicle, pulling a female driver out of an orange Hyundai Elantra.
London Police Sergeant Sandasha Bough said they found the Elantra on Thursday, not far from the scene of the carjacking, “We can say that early this afternoon, the reported stolen vehicle was located in the southeast end of the city.”
Police say they continue to look for at least three suspects. They’re also looking for dashcam or doorbell footage from the area.
Witnesses told CTV News, that police had notified them that the suspects has been involved in a separate incident involving OPP, outside of the city.
Late Thursday afternoon, OPP and Oneida Nation Police issued a release saying an un-plated vehicle was spotted on the Oneida Nation Territory.
They say an OPP cruiser was also struck at that time. The damage wasn’t serious and there were no injuries.
The OPP say an aviation unit was called in but the vehicle wasn’t located.
London police told CTV News they believe the truck in both the OPP investigation and the London investigation is the same vehicle and the London investigation is ongoing.
